Nintendo Contemplating Smartphone Gaming Accessories

The name and brand "Nintendo" brings back many memories of fun filled hours playing Mario Kart and of the portable gaming devices, such as the Nintendo DS. However, the business had not performed as strongly in recent years but is working hard on a comeback. We know that the company is busy preparing a new gaming console, the NX, due out in March. Today's story concerns the company investing more into smartphone and tablet entertainment, after ignoring these emerging gaming platforms for a long, long time. The story today follows an interview between a number of Nintendo executives, including Shinya Takahashi (general manager of entertainment, planning and development) and Shigeru Miyamoto (creative fellow and senior managing director), and the Polygon website.

One key message is clear: Nintendo need to invest in more products beyond the new NX console. This logically includes software (games) for smartphones and tablets but the executives hinted that Nintendo is considering developing and investing into a range of physical controllers. Shinya Takahashi's comments alluded that Nintendo's line of thinking is to investigate if action games are possible with a physical controller for portable devices, and how the company can make things happen in a game. We have recently seen other companies planning to release products that are structurally similar to emulating Nintendo's hardware of yesteryear, although it remains to be seen if alternative products are able to emulate Nintendo's charm and well-built, child-proof technology. However, gamers might not have to rely on third party manufacturers, but may perhaps be able to buy their own genuine Nintendo accessory gaming hardware for smartphones or tablets.

As for the software development side of things, we were already aware of Nintendo's mobile gaming ambition and has already released a smartphone application, which is Miitomo. Nintendo has plans for more collaborative titles with Japanese smartphone game provider, DeNA; Nintendo and DeNA produced Miitomo together and we've heard of their plans to release another four titles between now and the release of the Nintendo NX console at the end of the first quarter next year. We understand that one is an Animal Crossing game, another is based on the Fire Emblem series with the other two being unknown. Four games in seven months does not sound like a great number but Nintendo are concentrating on the quality of their titles, which bodes well.

I grew up with 8-bit computers and moved into PDAs in my professional life, using a number of devices from early Windows CE clamshells and later. Today, my main devices are a Nexus 5X, a Sony Xperia Z Tablet and a coffee cup.